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Claiming Compensation when Injured in Public Place
Making a Personal Injury Claim
Limitation on Personal Injury Claims
Employers have a legal and moral obligation to provide a safe working environment for their employees. This covers all aspects of your job, from the work you do to the place that you do it in. If your job has caused you to have an accident or to become ill, your employer may well be shown to be responsible for this.
Any damage to your health that resulted from you doing your job can count as Industrial Injury. Clear cut damage to the body such as broken bones, burns etc are really just the beginning. Diseases and long term health conditions may also constitute Industrial Injury.
If your workplace or the type of work you do has caused you a disease, such as chest or lung conditions caused by working with fumes, this is an Industrial Injury and your employer must accept their part in the responsibility. Many of the notable cases in the development of recognition for these cases, in recent years, related to asbestosis and other diseases of the chest caused by working within various different industries.
In many cases, it will be an employer’s failure to comply with health and safety regulations that has caused an industrial injury, rather than an unforeseen accident. Poor practices for manual handling are one of the most common ways that people get injured at work. Similarly, exposure to dangerous chemicals regulated under the COSHH rules is a common cause for injury.
Often employees may become injured over time through the fact that their place of work has been poorly designed or maintained. An example of this is repetitive strain injury, which causes health problems for people working in all manner of different environments, from factories through to offices.
If you believe that you can prove that your health problem or injury was caused by the negligence of your employer, you may be able to make a personal injury claim against them. You may also be eligible to claim Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit.
Many solicitors will pursue a personal injury claim for you against and employer on the basis of industrial injury, with varying degrees of success depending on particular cases.
An alarming range of injuries are suffered by people at work every year, from minor injuries to serious illness due to an employer’s failure to fulfil their responsibilities. In some cases, where an injury has been extreme enough that the employee has actually died, their relatives may be able to put a claim in against the employer.
If you are looking to put in a claim against your employer, you should ideally seek legal advice as soon as possible after you become aware of the injury. If your place of work has an Accident Book, make sure your accident is accurately recorded in it, as this may be used as part of your claim. Serious injuries such as broken bones and diseases should also be reported to the Health and Safety Executive, so you should check that your employer has done this.
Record as much information as you can about the injury and the workplace, taking photographs if necessary so that the solicitors will have as much evidence as possible to prove your injury and your employer’s negligence.
You need to show not only that your injury was caused by the work conditions, but that the employer should have been able to foresee that an injury may have been likely due to the conditions. It should have been clear that a consequence of the employer’s negligence was likely to be an accident or injury to one of the employees.
In terms of the compensation that you may receive if your claim is successful, it is worked out in a number of ways.
General Damages is intended to include the general suffering that you’ve experienced, as well as the inability to carry out certain aspects of your life because of the injury; naturally medical evidence for this may be required.
Special Damages are intended to compensate you for any financial cost that the injury has caused you. You should therefore keep a record of any expenses that you’ve occurred because of the injury.
If the accident has prevented you from continuing work, or from continuing in the same role, you may be awarded additional compensation on this basis. The cost of any required modifications to your home may also be covered.
Where a family are claiming on the basis of a deceased relative, the claim may include funeral expenses as well as taking into account the deceased’s financial contribution to the home.
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